Charlotte Perkins Gilman: early on the zine scene

Charlotte Perkins Gilman didn’t have it easy.  She grew up in the Victorian era, and at that time women were expected to be “ornamental” additions to a man’s home.  Women kept the house clean and the children quite, they played music, embroidered pillows, and served tea.  Women didn’t talk, and they certainly didn’t argue with the man of the house.  Basically, women were fluff.  

Charlotte’s life wasn’t very fluffy.  Two of her siblings died in infancy, her father abandoned the family, and her mother was forced to send Charlotte live with various relatives, meaning that Charlotte moved every few months as relatives got tired of supporting her.  Charlotte stood unwanted in the parlors of Victorian society and watched as that society consumed the lives of women, mothers, and girls.  One day she picked up a pen and a journal and set to work.

Charlotte didn’t write the simple poetry and odes to spring flowers that were the expected literary work of a Victorian woman.  She had stood by and watched as women were destroyed by the impossible paradoxes of Victorian society.  She had seen her mother’s life destroyed when her father left them without financial support, and she had seen how her female relatives lived at the whim of their husbands.  Charlotte was not a happy camper, and her writing doesn’t sugar coat a thing.  

Have you ever shivered over a Dean Koontz novel, or checked under your bed after reading Stephen King, check out Charlotte’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”.  This is a psychological thriller like none other, and the mental picture it paints is pretty damn disturbing.  Charlotte believed that women had to achieve personal independence, and in stories like “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte conjures a horrific vision of what could happen to a woman whose life is controlled by even the most well-meaning of men.

Once Charlotte got going, she didn’t look back.  She wrote six major non-fiction books (including Women and Economics in 1898 that became a best seller and was translated into seven languages!), hundreds of poems, short stories, plays, and eight novel length works of fiction.  She even published a monthly feminist magazine...one of the earliest grrl zines, called “The Forerunner”.

As an author, Charlotte gained the financial independence she argued was the first step in achieving social equality.  As soon as women were no longer dependent on others for their daily needs, they would be free to claim true equality without fear of reprisal.  Although she married Charles Stetson, but when he objected to her writing and lecturing Charlotte packed her bags and took off.  She married again in 1900 to a young fellow named George Gilman and they lived happily together (guess he didn’t mind that his wife made more money and was better known than he was!) until George died in 1934.

Charlotte had known since 1932 that she was dying of breast cancer.  After George died, Charlotte finished her autobiography “The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman” and died by a self-administered overdose of chloroform.  Her final words were “better chloroform than cancer”.

Charlotte moved from the shadows of the Victorian parlor to the spotlight of liberal thought.  She shone a light into the corners of domestic oppression and found a true love.  She fought for her life and made her own choices from first to last.  When you do your monthly breast check (and you do do a monthly breast check, don’t you?) think about Charlotte and all the other women who fought for your rights and who died without knowing those rights for themselves.

 

Leslie Clay grrl-e-grrl.com contributor